Name: Wyatt
Social Justice Group: DACA and Immigration
Date of Fieldwork: January 24, 2018
Name of Organization: East End Temple
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: N/A
Type of Fieldwork: Direct Action
What I did:
We went to the East End Temple to learn about how we can correctly accompany undocumented immigrants to their court dates and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) check-ins.
What I learned:
We learned a lot on this fieldwork. The first thing we learned was that New York City is not always a sanctuary city, unlike what multiple government officials had previously told us. Rabi, an undocumented leader at the East End Temple was detained. 18 people from the temple peacefully protested his detainment and were beat and arrested by the New York Police Department. This is not how a sanctuary city acts. Secondly, we learned how to accompany an undocumented immigrant to a court appearance or ICE hearing. These court appearances are horrifying for the undocumented immigrant, or “Friends” as the temple calls them. Just being there with the Friend is enough to empower them and make them feel like they are not alone, but also your presence tells the judges that these people are part of a community and that community will not stand for inhumane deportations.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
The biggest thing we learned about social justice work is that politicians and government officials lie. Sometimes, these lies can be unintentional or the lie only becomes a lie based off of the actions of one person (for example Rabi getting detained by the NYPD), but it is extremely hard to tell. It is disappointing knowing that we were lied to by two government officials that seemed like they genuinely had good intentions. What happened with Rabi was out of their control, but I know that that is not an isolated incident. These officials knew that this was going on and failed to tell us, which is pretty big, as they spend so much time advocated about how great of a sanctuary city New York is.
